


star, square,circle, wavy lines,cross

by Pezzythecat



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Drinking, Dubious Science, Emotionally Repressed, Friendship, M/M, questionable science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25729210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pezzythecat/pseuds/Pezzythecat
Summary: Daisy found a pack of Zener cards and has recently come in to possession of two bottles of whisky.Questionable science as supervised by the beholding and done under unreliable parameters leads to a few home truths.  But what is truth? And is truth the same as trust?This is a flashfic written for the Magnus Archives Flash Fanwork Challenge prompt "Test". Check it out at https://magnus-mailday.dreamwidth.org!
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51





	star, square,circle, wavy lines,cross

**Author's Note:**

> This is a flashfic written for the Magnus Archives Flash Fanwork Challenge prompt "test". Check it out at https://magnus-mailday.dreamwidth.org!

  
  
  


The card had a cross on it.

Jon knew that before Daisy had even picked it from the packet. Just as the previous had held a set of parallel wavy lines and the one before that a star.

She glared at him as the word Square left his mouth and filled the air.

"Sims, this is a serious experimental experiment, do not make me change the parameters."

"Mitigating factors in the way of whisky invalidate any scientific response." He huffed in retort as he tipped out another serving into the faded yellow cups that the archives break room had provided.

"You say that like a man who's never seen Ghostbusters." Daisy accused, threatening him with the point of a finger.

"I say that like a man who has seen Ghostbusters too many times, and knows that the variables in this experiment are too vast to be used in any scientifically provable grounds for fact,"

"Humour me."

" I do nothing but humour you."

"Well, humour me more then. What's on this card…"

Jon sighed, he didn't need to look at the card at all to know it was a circle. Ever since they had come back out from the buried Daisy seemed to be close to his side, or Melanie's side. Jon didn't mind as such, even if the constant presence of another person was so far away from what he was used to that it often felt uncomfortable. The companionship was welcomed on dark nights like this when the archives felt more like a living, breathing monster than a place of academia.

"Circle."

"That's the spirit"

"Where did you find the cards anyw-… Martin?" He knew the answer as he asked the question, Martin's desk second draw down, behind the poetry book and the novelty pen that real Sasha had brought him back from a hen night at Blackpool, long run out but not thrown away. A little thing to hold on to like the broken watch that had once belonged to Tim that was still upon Martin's wrist even now. 

Not that Jon could see it through the fog that wrapped around the man.

"Yeah, found them in your boyfriend's desk, right behind a poem about someone who will remain nameless having a smile that hung the stars…. Bollocks I've never seen you smile once you miserable bastard." Daisy scoffed as she shuffled the cards in her hand.

"I smiled once on my fifth birthday, I believe I got a spirograph and a teenage mutant ninja turtle… the red one… Raphael."

"What, not the most up-to-date copy of the Oxford English dictionary? A subscription to Mensa?" Daisy's hand hovered over the card pack before pulling one at random…

“Water symbol. And I got the dictionary for Christmas. I wanted à la carte kitchen. but my Mum couldn't find one anywhere so she taught me to cook on ‘the big oven’ as she called it." Taking a swig of the Amber liquid burned his throat but it distracted him from the strange twist of emotions that were forming inside him, he tended to not think of his parents, the vague memories of them he wanted to preserve, keep them away from the eye if he could help it. Yet here was his mother's face clear as day: big green eyes and ginger curls, his father's long dark hair tied at the nape of his neck, familiar hazel eyes smiling down from behind a book as he read aloud to the room. Would they be proud of him? Would they be heartbroken at the monster he had become?

"You with me Sims?”

“Sorry Daisy. You were saying?”

She waved another white card in front of him “Come on Venkman what's on the card?”

“A circle.”

_ Why did Martin have these cards in his desk? _

**He thought you needed them for the parapsychology degree; Zener cards are easy to find; he bought them off Ebay before he started at the institute; it was the cheapest thing he could find, and he had rent to pay.**

Jon cursed at the eye for giving him that information. It was irrelevant; it gave him no insight to the man now. Could it not give him the knowledge that Martin was safe?

**We know that would be a lie; we don’t deal in lies; we deal in knowledge.**

_ Well, maybe I want the knowledge that Martin is at least alive. _

**Alive as anyone is in this mausoleum of the eye.**

“Sims?”

“Why were you in Martin’s desk?”

“I was looking for a lighter, I know he normally has spares.” Daisy was watching him now, her hands shuffling the cards but her eyes trained on him, reading his expression ever the detective.

“Why would he have a lighter?”

“Because it’s Martin, he likes to be prepared. What happens if one day you don’t have one? He can come sweeping in and save the day. Your own personal knight in shining armour. Sir Martin the bringer of flames” Daisy splayed the cards on the desk placing five in a neat row away from the others. Knowing look in her eye she steepled her hands like a bond villain about to monologue their cunning plan “Even before everything... that boy was long gone. Just cause you're too dense to notice doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Jon huffed, the only two people who had called him out on it were either dead or now not speaking to him ‘ _ for his own good’ _ Daisy calling him out on it seemed to be a slap to the face he had not expected, yet the idea of Martin being so easy to read that even Daisy had noticed… had he been just as obvious? He had tried so hard in the past to hide it.

“Star, circle, cross, water, square. And for your information I noticed.” Where was this coming from? Somewhere in his head he was sure the eye was laughing at his expense. But it was true. He just hadn’t expected to share this information with Daisy of all people.

But he had noticed Martin, had noticed and continued noticing ever since that very first run in with the dog in the archives, all bumbling and flustered, glasses askew and that blasted hoodie he insisted on leaving round the archives it had been a constant bone of contention since that very first day. 

Yet it wrapped around Jon’s shoulders now, holding him together with its faded edges, a last grip of comfort clinging on to the memory of something that was always just out of reach.

He should have said something before he went charging head first on a hero’s quest, isn’t that how it happened in adventure books, the knight declares his heart only to return to his loves open arms after vanquishing the big bad and they lived happily ever after. Maybe that was the problem, maybe both of them were the Knight in their own story always just missing each other, or maybe they were never supposed to meet some sort of cosmic joke on the eyes behalf.

But Martin was very much in his life, or at least he had been.

Martin Blackwood had exploded into his life like a tiny nuclear reaction and ever since its gravitational pull of the resulting sun had him in orbit. That background radiation had broken through the defences and he was now reliant on that constant source, he wanted Martin where he could see him, could bask in that energy of knowing to that at least one person he was more than just a monster.

**Shame you pushed him away.**

_ I died. _

**You pushed him away, and now he's turning into a monster.**

**JUST**

**LIKE**

**YOU**

_ Shut up, shut up, shut up. _

  
  


Daisy re-shuffled the cards. Watching. She always watched, she could read people, he hoped he wasn’t that much of an open book.

“You noticed yet…?”

“Do we have to do this? I don’t ask you about Basira.” he grunted as Daisy missed a move shuffling and the cards scattered across the desk. 

“Don’t change the subject.” a flurry of hands scattered across the table gathering the test cards and placing them in neat piles. “Were talking about you.”

“I’d noticed.”

“And yet as soon as we move to the subject of Mr Invisible you back yourself up in a nice little corner and change the subject.”

“It hurts.”

“I know it does.” Daisy sighed. “I'm not going to bullshit you. It hurts more than any physical pain could, it’s not easy is it. Trusting someone with everything you are.” she took a swig from her cup, closing her eyes as she mulled her words over. “Losing that connection is terrifying, but we have to trust them.”

“He wants nothing to do with me Daisy. Nothing.”

“Did he say that?”

“Several times and in several ways.”

“Seems to me you need to learn to read between the lines.”

Daisy leant back in her chair, flicking through the cards in her hand eventually settling on one and holding it out in front of her, Jon stared at it for a moment waiting for the eye to give him the answer, but nothing happened but a sharp pain behind his left eye.

Daisy placed the card in the middle of the table face down.

“I could tell you it has a star on it. But would you believe me? Or would you have to look for yourself?”

Jon searched her eyes. He was beginning to think he knew Daisy, lower case k.

Yet he still questioned the truth that came out of her mouth, maybe it was because he was still paranoid at a base level, maybe it was because this seemed like the setup, and he had his own fair share of walking straight into them. 

His burned hand twitched in sympathy or warning he wasn't sure.

Daisy picked up the whisky bottle and looked disappointingly at the last few dregs in the bottom of the bottle. “Be back in a second…” she got to her feet sliding towards the door, before rounding back and resting on the jamb, “No peeking.”

The urge to reach out and look at the information the eye refused caused him to twitch his hand out towards the card on instinct. The pain behind his eye was growing as the eye searched for the answer to the question. There were only five cards in the deck and the eye knew that the probability factor of getting fifteen right in succession was one in nineteen thousand. He was on card fourteen, even if he just guessed he had a one in five chance of being right.

Yet the eye was desperate to be right.

Jon fought it.

He wanted to trust Daisy. If he believed it was a star hard enough, maybe the eye would too.

The bottle appearing suddenly in his eyeline made him jump; he had been staring at the back side of the card so intently he was surprised it hadn’t burst into flames.

“Did you peak?”

“Nope, I trust you, it's got a star on it,” he watched her pour them out another drink, before folding herself into her chair.

“And why did you believe what I said?” she questioned.

“Because… you're my friend?” he hated that it came out as a question, Daisy was his friend. At this moment in time, possibly his only one. 

“Do you trust me?”

**No, you don't, you can’t trust anyone.**

“I’m trying very hard too, despite the fact some malevolent overlord is trying to make me believe that you're lying.”

Daisy reached out turning over the sole card that remained on the desk.

Its blank white face was stark in contrast to the dark wood of Jon’s desk.

**She lied.**

“You lied?”

“Sometimes we have to lie, even to our friends, or the people we love.” she scooped the card of betrayal back into the pack. Carefully sliding them back into the box and pushing it over to Jon. “I saw his face when I told him you got back safe from Ny-Ålesund. He misses you, he’s just trying to keep you safe in any way he can. We can’t all be hunters.”

“Daisy…”

“Do you trust him? This isn’t a test.” she placed her hands either side of his on the desk palm up as if showing her hand.

“I want to.” he really did.

“If Basira told me there was a star on the card, I would believe her without question. Lie or not I would know she had her reasons.” she reached out clasping her hand over his and squeezing gently “I’m not saying it’s right, but maybe you should trust your heart and not your head on this one.”

“Trust in the star?”

“Trust in your invisible man, has he ever let you down before?”

**Yes**

_ Martin has never let us down, even you know that’s a lie _

“No.”

“Do you trust him?”

**No**

“Yes, with my life.”

“Then trust in the star, trust in the lie.”

**You can’t trust the distortion**

“Even if it means leaving him to Peter Lukas?”

**You can't trust the forsaken, they hide where we can’t see them Archivist.**

“If you care for him the way I know you do, you will trust him, you have to or you will lose him and then the house wins.”

“The house always wins Daisy, gambling with Martin’s life is-”

“-not your decision to make. It's his.”

Daisy reached out grabbing the whiskey bottle before walking backwards towards the door.

“This is getting too Gilmore girls, I'm tapping out. Before you know feelings and stuff happen, and I start questioning my own sanity.” she stood framed in the doorway gazing at Jon where he slumped in his chair cradling the cards to his chest, eyes cast towards the ceiling trying to search out the empty space in his knowledge where he knew Martin resided.

“Trust the star Jon. Trust your Invisible man, he still loves you, dunno why but then again who am I to judge.”

“Trust the star, Not a test.” he muttered, not taking his eyes from the ceiling tiles.

“Not a test.” Daisy repeated as she exerted towards the tunnels.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before opening the jacket for the cards and thumbing through until he found the blank card. Opening the draw he pulled out a marker pen and took his time writing out the word STAR in block capitals.

Placing it in his chest pocket over his heart he headed to the cot, trusting in a star that wasn’t a star. Trusting that Martin knew what he was doing. Wondering if he lay awake three floors up in that pocket of unknowing in the same way Jon did tucked under thread bare blankets in the belly of a temple of an all seeing god that didn’t enjoy being blind within its own walls.

**You can't trust him.**

“I can and I will.” he whispered into the darkness around him pressing the card closer to his heart. He would trust Martin with his life, he just hoped that Martin felt the same.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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